


Bubble Wrap

by Kabiki_Kat



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Modern AU, Roommates, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 04:06:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5897596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kabiki_Kat/pseuds/Kabiki_Kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From grimmbluepanther.tumblr.com</p><p>Modern AU headcanon that Fenris hates the sound of bubble wrap being popped.</p><p>Our combined headcanons into a single fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bubble Wrap

**Author's Note:**

> For: grimmbluepanther.tumblr.com
> 
> From: orana-fenris.tumblr.com
> 
> Hope you like it, it was really fun to jam with you about this!

He swore by the Maker if he heard it one more time he was going to-

POP!

Spinning around to face the living room with a growl Fenris glared at Orana and Hawke as they pulled out the dinner plates and set them on the living room table. Catching the look on his face Hawke shrugged and raised an unimpressed eyebrow while Orana looked close to panic.

The gang had finally found a rental house big enough to house all of them, yet still cheap enough for them all afford. Varric, Anders and Merrill were upstairs assembling furniture in their rooms while Hawke, Orana and Fenris unpacked the living room and kitchen. Aveline was out shopping with Sebastian for enough groceries to feed a small army. 

While the thought of moving out of his small loft and into a large house with all of his friends (who could afford regular meals and heating) was pleasant at first, Fenris soon remembered why he had been reluctant to accept Hawke’s offer of living with them the first time; they all were loud and nosey. 

He didn’t know Orana too well, she was one of Hawke’s friends. Apparently she had been kicked out of her house after her dad died and needed a place to stay, Hawke had always been a generous sort. She hadn’t spoken to him much since they met a few days prior, she hardly spoke to anyone save for Hawke. He almost felt bad for spooking the girl but he hated the sound that bubble wrap made as it popped.

Hawke pulled out another plate and snapped a few of the bubbles as a result and Fenris felt his ears twitch. Still glaring at Hawke he set down his load of dish towels on the counter that separated the kitchen and living room.

“Is there no way to unpack without making that bloody noise?” He asked irately.

“Probably.” Hawke said casually, popping another few bubbles and making Fenris twitch woth each one. Orana sat to Hawke’s side, her eyes wide at Fenris’s display.

As he turned his attention to her, Fenris noticed that she had started to unwrap the dishes far more carefully than Hawke. He nodded at her, satisfied that someone was listening to him and turned back around to finish putting the dish towels away and missing the wink Hawke sent towards Orana as he picked up a sheet of bubble wrap and twisted it sharply.

“Vishante kaffas!” Fenris yelled as the sound caused an unpleasant shiver to go down his spine as he jumped and dropped his armload of towels. He turned, ready to give Hawke a piece of his mind but was startled to hear a small round of delicate giggles coming from Orana.

Her face was beat red and she was having trouble holding her giggles back from behind her hand. Hawke looked as shocked as Fenris as they watched the quiet young woman regain her composure. 

“Is something funny to you?” Fenris sneered loudly, he was aware of Varric and Isabella coming down the hall to see what the noise was about but ignored them in favor of the young woman in front of him. Once more he had to hold back a flash of guilt at the panic he saw on the girl’s face.

“I’m sorry Fenris, you just looked so silly for a moment there. I didn’t expect you to jump and yell that.” Orana blushed an even darker shade of red as all the eyes in the room turned on her.

“Is there something particularly funny about what he said?” Varric asked, coming forward to lean against the couch, looking at Orana with an amused smile.

“It means ‘you shit on my tongue’.” She replied quietly through another small giggle. 

Fenris was surprised to find that Orana knew what he was saying, Tevine was a dead language and very few bothered to learn. Though if she thought that it was funny for him to swear in it he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“So Broody, what was the yelling about?” Varric wondered, turning his attention to Fenris. 

“I’m not about to tell you, Dwarf.” He growled.  
“Fenris doesn’t like the sound of bubble wrap popping.” Hawke said nonchalantly, though he failed to completely hide the amusement in his eyes. Fenris really needed to consider finding new friends.

He was about to respond and deny the accusation but just as he opened his mouth Isabella had crossed the room to Hawke’s side and picked up a sheet of the bubble wrap, twisting it and causing an eruption of popping sounds that made Fenris shudder. 

“Venhedis!” He said reflexively, causing Orana once more to giggle from behind her hand. 

“I don’t see what’s so funny about it.” Anders said sullenly, he didn’t like the thought of living with Fenris and stored the information on his pet peeve away to consider later.

“He’s just so stoic all the time,” Orana said once she had quieted down “It’s funny to see him go from so calm to angry so quickly.”

Fenris heard Isabella and Merrill snickering as they went back upstairs to finish putting together the furniture for their rooms while he glared at Anders, he respected the man’s line of work but his personality left much to be desired.

Huffing out an impatient breath Fenris stared to pick up the scattered towels and ignored Hawke whispering into Orana’s pointed ear as Anders sneered at him one last time before returning up the stairs.

He had a feeling that the next few days would be unpleasant to say the least.

 

There were times when Fenris could feel a certain satisfaction at being correct. This was not one of them.

For the past few days as they finished unpacking the knick-knacks and such, there were random times when he would be assaulted by the grating sound of popping bubble wrap.  
Each time he turned around it was always Orana and Isabella trying to look innocent but Orana’s bright red face gave them away every time. Scolding them did nothing but cause Isabella to make lewd remarks about punishment, making Orana cover her mouth in shock and deepened the flush on her face. Hawke tried to help at one point, disposing of the remaining bubble wrap before the girls could get to it but with the amount of online orders that came into the house it was nearly unavoidable.

At one point Fenris had tried to convince Hawke to have everything sent in packing peanuts instead but rather than relenting and allowing Fenris a measure of peace he got an hour long lecture on recycling and environmentalism instead.

Living with the gang wasn’t all bad; he rarely saw Anders due to his schedule, the house was always warm and Orana was a fantastic cook. After finding out she also preferred spicy food he started pitching into the spices that she would get from the grocery store. Hawke couldn’t stand the spice levels of most of her dishes but would eat them anyway, the rest of the house was able to handle it to different degrees but none of them ate with the relish that Fenris and Isabella did whenever it was Orana’s turn to cook.

Having roommates also took care of the lingering sense of isolation Fenris had felt in the past. Now anytime he wanted to feel a part of something he simply had to venture out of his room and read in the living room while Hawke played video games with Varric and Orana strummed on her guitar. 

It didn’t excuse the damn bubble wrap though.

At some point they had, thankfully, ran out of the stuff but somehow someone (Varric, it had to be Varric) kept changing his text alert to the sound of the popping of bubble wrap.

Each time he got a text and heard that infernal noise he would swear up a storm in Tevene and stomp around for his phone, heedless of Orana giggling and snapchatting Varric his reactions. His rants usually ended in broken glasses, at first the rest of the gang tried to stop him but as time went on they simply made sure they left their own dirty glasses well within reach of him while he ranted.

Hawke was able to take up a hobby of turning all of Fenris’s used wine bottles into new glasses, they also saved money on the hot water bill because they weren’t washing as many cups.  
Now he kept his phone on him at all times, changed the password daily and made sure he never got too close to Varric while his phone was in his pocket, the dwarf was a natural pickpocket and it never hurt to be careful. 

Though it was for naught. 

Now there were times when he sat down only to find squares of bubble wrap under seat cushions or a stack of books he would add to. It wasn’t until he caught Isabella gluing a square of the stuff under the cushions of the kitchen chairs that he knew he had to start fighting fire with fire.

The sound didn’t even affect him the same way anymore. He had grown used to it as the weeks had passed. Though he kept up the façade to keep Hawke off his back about his need to break things and keep Varric and Isabella entertained. The fact that every time he ‘went into a rage’ made Orana giggle with such a lightheartedness it made his heart ache was of little import to him, he was more concerned about keeping the new status quo. But there was also the principle of not letting his friends get away with annoying him. 

Varric was easy; breaking into his computer and adding grammar corrections and notes to all of his saved documents was a breeze and the agonized groaning that came as a result was vindictively satisfying. 

Isabella was also simple to annoy, he hid the most revealing pieces of her closet in favor of some old sweats he had found in the bottom of Hawkes closet. Isabella demanded the rest of the house help her find them and there was a three day long search for the missing skirts and tops while Aveline and Fenris sat on the couch sharing a bottle of wine and cackling at their misery.

With Hawke (who started this whole mess) he mixed up the recycling. Always making sure they were in sight of Fenris when he threw a plastic bottle in with the newspaper and watching them twitch each time he did so. 

Fenris never needed an excuse to annoy Anders but he figured that while he was at it he should cover all of his bases. The medical textbooks that Anders had left over from collage were as good a bet as any. There was a core part of him that objected to defacing a book in anyway but eventually Fenris’s disregard for Anders won through and he dog eared every other page in three of his medical books. The screeching he heard from Anders when he saw them was the most pleasant thing Fenris had heard since he had moved in.

Merrill was annoying but she had never caused him any direct grief so he let her be, the same went for Aveline and Sebastian. No, the last person he needed to get back at was Orana. Without her he was sure the others wouldn’t have carried this on for as long as they did. Each time he raged in Tevene she would let out those delicate giggles until she was red in the face and gasping. He told himself that it was not endearing and nearly convinced himself that he thought it annoying. Nearly.  
He needed to find out her pet peeve. Then perhaps they would stop and everyone could live in relative peace.

 

He stumbled upon it by chance one evening. The tick he had been looking for since he had decided to fight back. 

As time had went on and Orana had grown comfortable with the other members of their crew she was always within reach of one of them. This usually led to her leaning on them in some way. Time and again he would walk into the living room to see Orana curled up on the couch with Merrill or Hawke, playing her guitar or reading a book. Laying her head on Varrics lap while he told her a story about some of his clients, leaning against Anders as he explained his views on the medical system or with her legs thrown across Aveline’s or Sebastian’s lap as they listened to her talk about her music or her father. 

She never clung to him though. If ever he found himself sitting next to her on the couch she would fidget in place until she grew uncomfortable and changed locations. At first he thought it was because she disliked him in particular but no, she didn’t know if he would welcome the physical contact and it made her uncomfortable to sit next to him as a result. Orana was a very tactile person and she never passed through the room without ruffling someone’s hair or patting their shoulder. But Fenris never allowed these sort of casual touches.

So he waited.

He found his chance one evening when Merrill had some friends from school over, all the seats were taken save for a small space next to Fenris. Predictably, Orana came into the living room to join in on the event and was forced to sit a hairsbreadth away from Fenris the entire time. Squirming uncomfortably the as she forced herself to maintain the distance he had forced upon them.

As the evening drew on Fenris failed to notice Orana starting to doze off and she fell gently into his side. At the time he was engaged in a conversation with the person next to him about Qunari philosophy and didn’t notice until the weight at his side grew heavier and he noticed that Orana had fell asleep on him. 

Fenris hadn’t expected her to be so…warm. 

Orana slept peacefully, making no sound save for the soft sighs of her breathing. Fenris was now aware of how stupidly petty he had allowed himself to become. In his desire to make his friends uncomfortable due to their exploitation of his pet peeves he ended up making himself even more uncomfortable due to the fact that he shared a lot of common peeves with them. And in the case of Orana, well, having someone close wasn’t so bad after all. 

Moving his arm and drawing Orana into his side he allowed himself to snort at his own foolish behavior. The murmur of voices around him started to grow faint and the warmth at his side drew him in. 

Merrill looked over to the couch and saw Fenris curled up with Orana, she gasped quietly and turned to Varric who, in turn, was taking a wad of bills from Hawke.

And if Varric followed it up by playing the popping bubble sound effect from his phone next to Fenris’s ear to wake him up caused said elf to snap awake and see Orana practically in his lap…well. 

They posted the photos of him looking beyond shocked and blushing while Orana laughed at him on every sort of social media they could find and printed out copies to put on the fridge. 

It still wasn’t as annoying as the sound of bubble wrap being popped.


End file.
